The entire Kalmyk community was hard hit by
the great economic crisis in the beginning of the thirties when many of
them lost their jobs  and
were left without means of support. However, while browsing the official
documents and records of Belgrade city municipality we learned that financial
assistance was allocated to two Kalmyk monks (on
the photo), as well as to
two other monks at Temple:
gelong
Sandji
Ignatov and Badma
Petrov whose rank we were not able to
determine.
From left: getsul Sandji-Ragba Menykov (1897 - 1968), boys studying Buddhist scriptures and prayers, the Head of the Temple (baksha) Jamnin (Sandji) Umaldinov (1882 - 1946). These two monks have translated the prayer recitals from Tibetan into Kalmyk. S.R. Menykov was also a poet. Up to now three of his poems have been recovered. |